1. TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to a computation apparatus, a computation method, and a program. In particular, the present invention relates to a computation apparatus, a computation method, and a program, which are for computing an exchange rate used in exchanging shop points issued for each shop and usable for payment for the shop into common points common to each shop.
2. Related Art
There have conventionally been services of providing customers who purchased goods at a shop with shop points usable for the next payment directed to the shop. This service gives incentives to customers to come back to the shop because the next payment will be discounted. In this way, this service is an attempt by a shop to secure customer patronage. Accordingly, it has been common that the shop points obtained for one shop are only usable in the shop.
However, such shop point service is currently adopted by an extremely large number of shops, and the market thereof is in the saturation state. Customers have to keep control of shop points for each different shop, which is a complicated task. The sales promotion effect for shops is also limited since they have to compete against many other shops pertaining to this service, and management distinctive from other shops requires complicated tasks. As opposed to this, adoption of common points usable in common to each of shops has been proposed so as to elevate the values of the shop points as well as to enhance the sales promotion effect of the shop points (e.g. the following patent document 1).
<Patent document 1> Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-197333
However, it is extremely difficult to define a common point value common to shops, because shop points are inherently issued based on the original set of values of a certain shop, and so a practical scheme has not yet been proposed. For example, it is difficult to adequately define an exchange rate used in exchanging shop points for one shop into common points.
In view of the above, an advantage of the present invention is provision of a computation apparatus, a computation method, and a program, which are able to solve the above-stated problems. This advantage is achieved by a combination of the disclosures of the independent claims provided in the claims. The dependent claims also define further advantageous examples of the present invention.